How was it done (Part II, or maybe part X)?

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dkeller_nc

Well-known member
The discussion about quirk routers earlier on the forum suggested another topic.  In the "Period design and construction" section of the forum, a member asked a question about sizing of flutes on quarter columns.  Most of us, I think, that have made these in the past use the "traditional" 20th century Fine Woodworking method - i.e., a lathe with an indexing head, a jig, and a router.

However, I'm sitting at my computer table, which happens to be an early 19th-century sheraton style drop-leaf with fluted legs, and running my fingers down the flutes makes it pretty obvious that they weren't machine made, because they're not of precise, uniform depth.

As a carver, if someone asked me to make one of these by hand, I would pick up a #9, start at the top, and switch to progessively smaller widths as I progressed down towards the foot.

However, I've seen a number of antique "fluting planes" at old tool events, and a recent show on "The WoodWright's Shop" featured Jeff Headley discussing the construction of an 18th century desk, and he showed a jig with a special scratch stock and holder that he'd used to make the 1/4 columns.

My question is this - while the carving tool and/or scratch stock method make sense to me, I can't quite figure out how a fluting plane could be used to accomplish the same thing.  These planes look a little like a small rounding plane, except that the "round" is in the exact center of the plane.  There is no fence, nor a bearing surface that would allow tracking the plane straight down the leg.

Any ideas? (Or another tool/method I haven't thought of?)
 
I can't claim any examination of historical evidence for the following possibilities.


You could step off, with a divider, the flute spacings around the leg; pencil in guide lines,
then use a v-carving tool to establish a "track", followed by a fluting plane.
This would handle a job when the flutes remained constant size, top-to-bottom.

Even though my hunch is most fluting planes were for architectual moldings, the only two fluting planes I have(both about 1/2" size) are 18th c in style and both at cabinet pitch.
 
Gene Landon at Olde Mill does essentially the same thing but he starts with a veiner instead of a V-tool.

Howard Steier
 
Both methods (using a v-tool or a veiner) sounds reasonable, but I wonder if any of you out there might have a (reprint) of an old book (for example, Moxon's Mechanik Exercises) that might make a reference about how this was done?
 
I'm not aware of any period references which describe the tools and techniques used to create fluting in furniture. While fluting planes may have been used  in cabinetmaking for a limited number of situations, I'm inclined to agree with gvforster that they were likely more commonly used in architectural work. And, I don't think we should be too perplexed by examples of fluting planes at "cabinet pitch," as joiners sometimes worked with timbers other than pine, poplar, etc., as well.

With furniture, much of the time there are aspects of the fluting which don't lend themselves to the use of planes. The tapered legs and flutes described by David for one, as well as various forms of stopped fluting which are very commonly found.

In the case of uniform stopped flutes, scratch stocks could be used, at least to finish up with, but they would not work well for tapered flutes. For these, I think the most direct approach would be the use of graduating sizes of carving tools as David describes.

However, I did have a question arising from his description of using a series of #9 gouges (London Pattern, I assume) for this purpose. Based on the terminology, I'd always assumed that #10 gouges, London Pattern, were the traditional tools used for this purpose. In addition to their name, "fluters/fluting gouges," my sense was that the upper part of the U-shape allowed one to create the semi-circular flute without having to work right to the extremities of the gouge. And that has seemed to work well for me.

I'm aware that the London Pattern numbering and naming system came along well after the eighteenth century, but older terminology and illustrations seem to indicate that this basic idea pre-dated the London Pattern. As one example, here are some listings of carving tools from the Christopher Gabriel 1791 inventory:

4 dozen Fluting Gouges, Cast Steel
1 dozen Fluting Gouges, Cast Steel
3 dozen Common Steel Fluting Gouges
5 Parting Tools
3 Bent Gouges
3 Vening Tools

Additionally, Smith's _Key to the Various Manufactories of Sheffield_, c. 1816, illustrates a bent fluting gouge, which looks very similar to what we would expect under the London Pattern. So it seems there is some continuity in the terminology associated with carving tools dating back into the eighteenth century.

I'm not trying to imply that the # 9's won't work for this, but mostly bring it up as a kind of reality check about the assumptions I've been operating under. What experiences/thoughts do other people have?

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR
 
Hi All,

I've had to do tapered flutings on spindle turnings only once or twice and have used a combination of the techniques suggested here already. Fortunately, my lathe has an indexing head so stepping off evenly spaced flutes was not too tricky. If your lathe does not have such a feature, you can rig one using a plywood disc or some other circular object with notches evenly spaced around the circumference. Phil Lowe demonstrated a similar technique using a drywall compound lid at the mid-year conference two years ago.

I based the narrow width of the flute on a gouge that I had--I think it was a #11. I then marked the center at the other end of the flute and measured half the width of the desired flute on each side of this center line. Using a straight edge, I then scribed a line from each of these points to the narrow end of the flute. I used a scratch stock mounted in a block that slid on the lathe bed to remove as much material as possible. I then used a slightly wider gouge to remove the remaining material up to the scribe line. Even if I had had a fluting plane the same width, I would not have been able to use it efficiently due to a raised bead just above the flute.

Don,

What is the difference between cast steel and common steel? Is the flute milled into a square blank of common steel?
 
Hi Mark et al,

As you likely know, the term "cast steel" refers to the type of steel used in that particular tool, rather than the method of manufacture. Specifically, cast steel is the common name for crucible steel - steel which was made (at least until about 1850) by placing short bars of cementation (blister) steel into a crucible, heating to the molten state, then pouring/casting it off into a mold to form an ingot. The ingots were then further worked by hot rolling, "tilting" (power hammering), etc.

The term "common steel" most likely indicates the tools were made of cementation (blister) steel, or, possibly, shear steel. Shear steel was produced by cutting short lengths of bars of blister steel, affixing them into a bundle, then forge welding them into an ingot through "tilting." Shear steel was also referred to, sometimes, as German steel, I believe.

We know that, by the 19th century, most gouges and similar edge tools were produced by hot forging blanks into the desired shapes through the use of moulds ("moods"), or dies. A process often referred to as "mooding." Gaynor and Hagedorn cite some evidence that this method was already in use during the eighteenth century, and I suspect it is much earlier than that. The British firm, Ashley Iles, still uses a traditional method very similar to this in the production of their carving and turning tools.

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR
 
I should have specified that I think in terms of the Swiss system, which is one number off from the Sheffield system of numbering the sweeps of gouges.  I'm thinking, therefore, that a #9 in the Swiss system is the equivalent of a #10 in the Sheffield system.

The reason I specified that I use decreasing widths going down the leg is that most table legs that I've done are tapered, so the flutes decrease in width as one gets to the end of the leg.  I've also found that close to the end I need to switch to a deeper gouge, since the flutes need to get a bit deeper to look right at the end.

Of course, using a plane for such a leg would be impossible (unless you had a whole graduated set, and I've never heard of a graduated set of fluting planes).
 
Don is correct about cast steel, but the crucible process was used well into the 20th Century.  The Bessemer process could not come close to producing steel as good as crucible steel, and the basic open hearth furnace, though better, generally could not produce steel as good as crucible steel.  It wasn't until the electric furnace that steel could be made that was as good as crucible steel.  I'd have to check, but from memory, I think the last crucible process factory shut down in the 1950's or so.  Today, very much better steel can be made than was made using the crucible process.

And just to add too much detail, the quality of the final tool is due both to the quality of the steel and the heat treating.  You can take excellent steel and get a very poor tool due to improper heat treating.

Mike
 
Mike, et al:

Thanks for the follow-up. It has alerted me to the fact that my previous post left an impression other than what I'd intended.

You are correct that the production of crucible/cast steel continued well into the 20th century. I've not seen really firm data, but it seems that crucible/cast steel production tended to taper off during the great depression. Though the demand for steel of all kinds during WWII led to the reopening of a number of Sheffield crucible steel furnaces for the duration, according to K. C. Barraclough (_Sheffield Steel_). Finally, small-scale specialized production of crucible steel continued into the 1960s at Huntsman's works.

The circa 1850 date I gave was for the particular process of producing crucible steel by charging the crucible with short bars of cementation/blister steel. Beginning about 1850, the process slowly converted to charging the crucibles with high quality Swedish bar iron and at least one form of very pure cast iron. By altering the the percentage of cast iron (with its relatively high carbon content) in the recipe, they could exercise fairly precise control over the carbon content of the crucible steel. For some uses, one form of cast iron used also included some manganese.

It may be theoretically possible to produce better steel today, but, based on my experience with late 19th and early 20th century carving tools (which seem to have utilized the highest quality of cast steel), I have yet to see any direct evidence that this actually happens. In fact, much of the specialty steels which people seem to be drawn to, today, were developed for reasons/usages which aren't particularly relevant for use in edge tools.

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR
 
I don't in any way disagree with what Don said in his previous post.  My only comment is that I'm skeptical of claims that our ancestors (say pre-1900) could produce better steel than we can today.  The problem our ancestors faced was that they had a very difficult time controlling the elements mixed with the iron.  Even given the same input (iron from the same ore and smelter), they could not produce steel with the same percentage of constituent elements - including carbon.  Nor could they duplicate the heat treatment, which was often judged by eye.

My theory is that the worst of the steel our ancestors produced is now long gone - scrapped and re-melted.  Tools made with the best steel (even if produced accidently) was recognized and passed down to us in a sort of "survival of the fittest" process.  But just as I own some old tools that are very good, I also own some old tools that are very bad - they won't hold an edge and you can see slag inclusions with the unaided eye.  But I keep them to remind me of the full history of iron and steel, and of how difficult it was for our ancestors to get good tools.

Mike
 
Many years ago, I had to make a replacement leg on a gateleg table that had tapered reeds. I turned the leg on the lathe and built an angled sled for the router that followed the taper. Using a point cutting roundover bit, and a handmade index disk, I got results good enough to be able to quickly hand finish them and today you cannot tell my leg from the originals.

Recently, I built a Sheraton style vanity table for my wife. I hand reeded and fluted the turned legs and mirror supports.  I stepped off the spacing on a piece of paper then wrapped that around the leg to mark the details. Then I used a pretty straight forward set of carving tools to make the reeds and flutes.

I agree that the hand work looks very good, but the fingers can tell that the legs were hand worked. What surprised me was how fast I was able to carve the legs. I probably was able to finish the legs in less time than setting up all the jigs.

Just my two cents,

Ralph
 
Mike et al,

I'm not sure you meant to imply this, but I didn't specifically claim that our forefathers actually produced better steel than we do today. Rather, I simply stated that I have yet to actually experience direct evidence that better steel, especially for edge tools, is produced today. High quality O-1 steel, properly heat treated, holds its own  alongside my late nineteenth and early twentieth century carving tools in fairly demanding usage.

I am a little puzzled by your theory, though, that the worst of the older steel was discarded long ago. In the same paragraph you provide evidence to the contrary when you mention older tools with inclusions and steel which won't hold an edge. I once owned a pristine wooden coffin smoother, made of apple, from D. R. Barton. When I went to sharpen it, I soon discovered that the steel in the iron had been "burnt" during the heat treating process and the iron was unusable. The plane had survived in such good condition precisely because the iron was unusable, I believe.

It might even even be possible to argue that the tools with the best steel may well have been more likely to be used up. In the end, I think there are so many variables which could impact the survival of any particular tool, that I don't believe we can meaningfully hypothesize about how representative the survivors are.

I think we do a disservice, though, by assuming that the steel and tool makers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were only able to make steel in a fairly random fashion. While they were surprisingly late in learning the underlying chemistry, and, especially, the role of carbon in the process of making and heat treating steel, they developed reasonably reliable empirical methods of making, judging and working with steel.

For starters, they paid a lot of attention to the source and quality of their raw materials. Especially for the best quality of steel, they sought out and paid a premium for wrought iron bars from a very few specific sources in Sweden.

Secondly, experienced hands at steel making could, and did, make use of a fracture test and visual inspection to obtain at least a relative idea of carbon content. According to K. C. Barraclough, this was done while selecting cementation/blister steel for producing shear steel and the charges for crucibles fairly early on. In a late 19th century book I own, entitled _The Treatment of Steel_, such a test was used to rank twelve samples upon which subsequent tests were to be conducted. Subsequent analysis confirmed that they were all ranked in the correct order, even though two of the samples varied by only 0.004% of carbon content. (The authors acknowledged that some luck was likely involved in this one case, but seemed to take it as a matter of course that the remainder were correctly ranked.)

This fracture test, as well as many other aspects of traditional steel making, did rely on experienced human judgment rather than electronic instrumentation, so was susceptible to typical human foibles. A Monday morning after a weekend bender, for example. But, the organization and character of steel and edge tool production in Sheffield likely offered something of a counterweight to extreme variations in quality.

The Sheffield edge tool manufacturers, for most of the 19th century, all operated under an agreed upon system of set prices and discounts. In other words, they agreed not to compete on the basis of price. So, the only real real basis for competition was name recognition based on a reputation for quality. Small wonder that well-known and respected names/marks were acquired by other firms to aid in their marketing. In any event, these companies might coast for a while on a previously earned reputation, but a notable drop in quality could spell financial ruin in fairly short order. Ashley Iles, in his _Memories of a Sheffield Tool Maker_, recounts a mid-20th century example of a company which went out of business after a single batch of edge tools were botched by the heat treating firm they were using.

As to current steel production, we regularly work with high quality O-1 steel.  That experience suggests that no two batches, even from the same manufacturer, behave in precisely the same manner. This shows up, particularly, during the heat treating process.  So, while electronic controls, etc. promise more consistency, there seem to be some practical (financial?) limitations in actual production runs.

Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR
 
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